Timescape

by Gregory Benford

Publisher:

Millenium

Copyright:

1980

Printing:

2000

ISBN:

1-85798-935-X

Format:

Trade paperback

Pages:

412

There are a lot of scientists in science fiction, but not a lot of science
the way that it's actually practiced today. Science fiction has moved
away the scientist as can-do engineer model of space opera, where a
scientist could build the new superweapon out of the spare parts in their
garage and rebuild society from basic materials, but science still tends
to show up only as results.

The idea of Timescape is to present a scientific puzzle from the
perspective of working scientists, complete with academic politics,
struggles for funding, disinterested grad students, personality conflicts,
and the incomprehending and sensationalist news media. Set against the
background of an ecological disaster in progress, scientists are
experimenting with tachyons in the future attempt to pass warnings back to
the past. Tachyons can only disrupt a particular type of experiment,
however, so they have to try to contact other scientists in the past
through patterned disruption of their results. Both threads of the plot
therefore focus on practicing scientists, ones from the future in a
civilization in decline and no resources desperately trying to get a
message through to someone who is trying to measure a physical phenomenon
while dealing with unexplained measurement noise.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't hang together very well. I think Benford
is trying for a slice-of-life presentation of the lives of scientists,
which would explain the amount of extraneous detail and events in the
story. It feels realistic, but realistically uninteresting. When the
various love life difficulties, personality conflicts, and insecurities
don't end up having any noticeable effect on the plot, I have a harder
time caring about them. Either the character interactions have to drive
the plot along or they have to be interesting enough to hold my attention
in their own right. Benford manages neither.

The science does reach a conclusion (and finally a bit of action near the
end of the book), but it's an unsatisfying one. Not only do most of the
events in the book have little to do with the plot, the actions of the
characters end up having minimal effect on the world as well. It's all
very pretty from a theory standpoint, and I had a pretty good idea where
Benford was going with it about halfway through the book, but there is
little emotional payoff in a rather depressing ending.

Benford had a different idea for a story, and throws a few other neat
ideas into the mix, but between mostly unlikeable characters, lots of
depressing background, and a fizzle ending, I think the best description
of Timescape is soulless. It's not badly written, and the
portrayal of working scientists makes this fiction about science in the
way that very little SF is, but it just didn't hold my interest.